The ANC will register its national list for the local government elections in two weeks time and will not be derailed by pending lawsuits, the party’s general secretary Gwede Mantashe said on Saturday.
“We only have one lawsuit and it will not stop us from continuing doing our work,” Mantashe said at a press briefing in Pretoria on Saturday.
He was referring to an incident in which four party members in the Alfred Nzo region launched a lawsuit against the ANC in the past week, in a dispute over a candidate list.
The group approached the Mthatha High Court on Tuesday, submitting that the decision to hold the list conference on Tuesday prior to the verification of properly constituted ANC branch meetings was illegal.
They said the conference should not have gone ahead prior to rulings on matters being appealed, and that an audit report determining the number of delegates in respect of each branch was invalid and should be set aside.
The interim order was granted, prohibiting the ANC from submitting candidate names for local government elections.
The ANC, which was opposing the application, would have to provide reasons on Thursday next week why the interdict should not be made a final order.
Meanwhile, Mantashe reiterated that any member who took the ANC to court had no interest in the party and would be immediately suspended for bringing the party into disrepute, pending internal disciplinary processes.
The same would apply to the four party members who had approached the courts.
As the ANC held its NEC meeting to discuss issues of the draft list of candidates, Mantashe said they had already gone through lists submitted by branches.
He said seven of the provinces had completed the processes, while the Eastern Cape and the North West still had “issues” that needed to be sorted out.
“A majority of the Eastern Cape is almost ready in a majority of its regions. We need to re-visit them [including the North West] and engage them on some issues that came out of the lists. Overall the list is almost ready,” he said.
“We’ll be able to register the list early so that if there are issues raised by the IEC [Independent Electoral Commission], we at least have three days to attend to them.”
The deadline that the ANC had set itself was March 22.
The IEC announced on Friday that all parties needed to submit their candidate lists by March 25. – Sapa